John hurried away, and soon he was walking along a narrow garden, very unlike a London garden, for it was full of frost-bitten herbaceous flowers and smelt of the country. Not a house on this side of the square resembled its neighbor; but Number 83 was the most charmingly odd of all, two stories high with a little Chinese balcony and jasmine over a queer pointed porch of wrought iron.
"Yes, sir, Mrs. Hamilton is at home," said the maid.
The last bars of something by Schumann or Chopin died away; in the comparative stillness that succeeded John could hear a canary singing, and the tinkle of tea-cups; there was also a smell of muffins and—mimosa, was it? Anyway it was very delicious, he thought, while he made his overcoat as small as possible, so as not to fill the tiny hall entirely.
"Mr. Touchwood was the name?" the maid asked.
"What an intelligent young woman," he thought. "How much more intelligent than that policeman. But women are more intelligent in small things."
John felt very large as he bowed his head to enter the drawing-room.
CHAPTER IX
A SUDDEN apprehension of his bulk (though he was only comparatively massive) overcame John when he stood inside the tiny drawing-room of 83 Camera Square; and it was not until the steam from the tea-pot had materialized into Miss Hamilton, who in a dress of filmy gray floated round him as a cloud swathes a mountain, that he felt at ease.
"Why, how charming of you to keep your word," her well-remembered voice, so soft and deep, was murmuring. "You don't know my mother, do you? Mother, this is Mr. Touchwood, who was so kind to Ida and me on the voyage back from America."
Mrs. Hamilton was one of those mothers that never destroy the prospects of their children by testifying outwardly to what their beauty may one day come: neither in face nor in expression nor in gesture nor in voice did she bear the least resemblance to her daughter. At first John was inclined to compare her to a diminutive clown; but presently he caught sight of some golden mandarins marching across a lacquer cupboard and decided that she resembled a mandarin; after which wherever he looked in the room he seemed to catch sight of her miniature—on the willow-pattern plates, on the mantelpiece in porcelain, and even on the red lacquer bridge that spanned the tea-caddy.